


Searching. Finding.

by MaryAnne615



Category: Casino Royale (2006), Female M (James Bond) - Fandom, James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1407700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryAnne615/pseuds/MaryAnne615
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first ever James Bond fanfic, written because I loved the interaction of these two characters.  Blatantly stolen from current headlines.  When M's plane goes missing the search is on.  When found, Bond goes to escort his boss back to England.  He learns a bit about her as she opens up to him regarding the ordeal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Searching. Finding.

Bond’s head was trying to clear as he reached for the mobile ringing on his nightstand, noting that his bedside clock said 2:14 a.m.

  
Tanner’s voice was terse, stressed.

  
“Get here, Double-O Seven, now,” was all he said before hanging up. Bond looked at the phone, a bit stunned, trying to figure out what could be wrong. It couldn’t be M summoning him…she was out of the country on a part holiday, part work trip. He vaguely remembered where she would be right now…Australia? Los Angeles? He had only half paid attention to her itinerary when she mentioned her trip while shoving documents into her briefcase. Keeping up with the head of MI6 was what her chief of staff and bodyguards were paid to do.

  
Quickly Bond shooed away the blonde in his bed, washed his face and dressed, foregoing a shower in lieu of a more prompt arrival at the MI6 Headquarters on the Thames River at Vauxhall Bridge.

  
As he drove through London’s deserted streets he turned on the radio. Distracted by the contrast of the bright traffic lights against the dark streets, it took a minute for him to register that the middle of the night call from M’s Chief of Staff was indeed about her.

  
"Authorities at this time have no clues or leads to the whereabouts of the plane. Again, Australian air traffic controllers lost contact with Qantas flight 773, a Boeing 747 going from Sydney to Los Angeles, about 2 hours after it took off with 501 passengers and 27 crew aboard. It’s now been three hours since the plane fell off radar."

  
Bond knew without being told that M was aboard that flight and the realization hit him cold. He slowly remembered the details, that she had originally traveled with a group of MI6 staff to a conference in Sydney on a chartered UK aircraft. But after the conference she had stayed behind to spend time with her eldest son, a financial advisor currently living outside of Sydney. Then she was heading to Washington, D.C. to have an office call with the head of the CIA, a man Bond knew to be an old friend of hers, before returning to London.

  
“Damn,” he said to no one.

  
He hit the gas pedal and sped through the night.

***

It was about 3 hours into the flight when her bodyguard, Morris, tapped her lightly on the shoulder. M looked up, surprised he was even still awake.

  
“Ma’am, sorry to bother you,” he said as he took the empty seat next to her. They were both in first class…her because that’s the way she traveled and him because she had upgraded him so he could keep a better eye on her.

  
“What’s up Morris?”

  
“Ma’am, I know this is a bit crazy, but I’m certain that we’ve lost quite a bit of altitude and we’ve changed direction. The constellations aren’t lining up right,” he said, pointing out her window into the darkness beyond.

  
M peered out the window and, of course, saw nothing below. They were flying over open water in the dark so a gradual loss of altitude wouldn’t be noticed by passengers, especially since most were asleep. She looked up into the stars but wasn’t familiar enough with astronomy to make anything of it.

  
“Are you sure, Morris?”

  
“Yes, ma’am,” he said tentatively. “I’m sure, especially about the constellations. Not so much about the altitude, but did you notice your ears popping about an hour ago?”

  
She had noticed her ears popping ever so slightly when she opened her book after the flight attendant had cleared the dinner dishes. She’d thought nothing of it as planes change altitude all the time to for a variety of reasons.

  
She was about to brush him off when she saw in his eyes that he was truly concerned. His one and only job this trip was to protect her, keep her safe, and deliver her back home to England. He was also a highly-trained British Secret Intelligence Service agent. Not Double-O level, but still a competent operative. She wouldn’t have trusted him with her safety if he weren’t. If his senses were on alert, she needed to pay attention.

  
But she also realized that she couldn’t just barge into the cockpit and demand answers from the flight crew. She couldn’t even use her authority as she was traveling under a false identity. Nobody on the plane knew that she was the head of Britain’s MI6. Except, of course, her bodyguard.

  
But he couldn’t identify himself to the crew, either. He was also flying under a false identity.

  
If there were mechanical problems and the plane was diverting, they would have landed back in Australia by now. The flight attendants she could see in the galley didn’t seem concerned so she knew the flight crew wasn’t incapacitated. In fact, she had seen one of the pilots come out of the flight deck and step into the front lavatory about 45 minutes ago.  
If this were a hijacking it was a quiet one. As the head of a spy agency, she knew that hijackers were rarely ever quiet. Usually they wanted the world to know what they had done and make their demands known on every news outlet on the planet.

  
As she thought about what to do her ears popped again.

***

Three hours later the plane made a sharp turn to the left, a turn M knew was not in their flight plan. Now she was convinced this was a hijacking. And a sophisticated inside job by the ease of how it was accomplished. She saw one of the flight attendants in the galley flinch, a surprised look on her face. The attendant next to her, a young, blond man, didn’t react at all.

  
She knew she had to take action to protect her and Morris. Still not even sure if this was about her she decided it was time for her to cover her tracks, meaning her cell phone needed to be destroyed. Thankfully she didn’t have a laptop…Tanner had insisted she let the returning MI6 staff bring it back with them so she could relax and enjoy her family. Tanner had then reminded her that Gregg Halverson, the head of the Security and Intelligence Committee and former Double-O, could handle the agency in her absence and, if he really needed her, he would find her.

  
She snuck her cell phone into her jacket pocket and headed into the lavatory two rows behind her seat. She nodded imperceptibly at Morris and he did the same, pulling his cell phone out of his bag and heading into the lavatory on his side of the plane.

  
Inside the small room M took the back off of her phone, pulled out the SIM card, and then pulled out the guts of the phone. With the heel of her shoe, she smashed the parts as much as she could without making noise that could be heard in the cabin, dropped everything into the toilet and hit the ‘Flush’ button. She knew it would take about 5 minutes for the chemicals in the blue water to render her cell phone completely unusable and unrecoverable.

  
From her other pocket she pulled out her so-called ‘panic button’. Q had given it to her before she left, giving her brief instructions on how to operate the locator beacon. She replayed his words in her mind, pulling apart the two long plastic pieces, pushing and holding the button to activate the beacon, and then using the magnetic strip to attach it to the underside of the trash bin.

  
If the plane didn’t crash and sink into the depths of the ocean, and if MI6 operatives got within 1,000 miles of the beacon, she could be tracked.

  
M sighed as she realized that were too many ‘ifs’ determining her life.

***

“I’ve got it!”

  
The excited voice was heard clearly above the din of the chatter of agents and personnel, all working together to listen for the signal from M’s transponder.

  
Gregg Halverson was at the technician’s side first, followed closely by Bond and then Tanner.

  
“Where is it?”

  
“I’ve got the latitude and longitude…it’s…it’s in a remote part of…Laos,” said the technician, his voice trailing off as he spoke.

  
Stunned silence filled the room. That was over 3,000 miles off course. And nowhere near the search area defined by data where the plane should be.

  
If this information was correct, for nine days the world had been looking in the wrong place.

  
In those nine days since the disappearance of Qantas flight 773, dozens of aircraft and ships from Australia, America, Japan, and the Philippines had scoured the ocean between Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, looking for signs of the aircraft. In what was turning into the largest search in history, absolutely no leads had been found. No debris. No bodies. Not even a random oil slick. Satellite imagery and radar data were being analyzed but there was too much open water and too much information to get a quick and easy answer.

  
The stress on the staff at MI6 was palpable as the agency had launched its own private search with three Royal Air Force planes and two Royal Navy ships. Not for the plane. Not for bodies or debris. But for a simple ping on the receivers built into their scanning equipment.

  
Q had reminded Halverson that M had a ‘panic button’ that could easily track her whereabouts. Nobody had reminded Halverson that the range of the beacon was only 1,000 miles, wouldn’t work under water, and that M had to be alive to activate it.

  
Halverson had been the one to telephone Ian Smithson, the head of the CIA and M’s old friend, to break the news that she was on the missing flight. It had not been an enjoyable conversation for either of them.

  
“Okay, get me a line to the Australians,” Halverson’s voice broke the silence. “And then Smithson.”

  
“And then the Laos government,” added Bond.

***

It took 15 hours of intense planning involving the government agencies of multiple countries, but when the mission plan was finished it was quite impressive.

  
“And it might even work,” Bond said to the planning group more than once.

  
The government of Laos was skeptical at first, not believing the British Prime Minister when he put a call through to the Laotian politburo. But with extensive negotiations, a reminder that they could be heroes in the eyes of the world, and a promise that the UK would eventually reveal how they found the plane, the Laos military agreed to help.

  
Preliminary observations showed an abandoned runway in the middle of nowhere just long enough to land a Boeing 747 and a large hangar at one end. While there was no sign of a plane, the hangar was surrounded on all sides by several men wielding semi-automatic machine guns, indicating hostages. The plan was to attack at dawn, in the fog of morning, then use the daylight hours to evacuate the passengers.

  
Provided, of course, they were still alive.

***

M woke suddenly after a long, fitful sleep, just as tired as she had been the night before. She wondered how long she could survive on two hours of sleep a night. Exhaustion was setting in, even though for the most part all she did was sit in the hot room and read or talk to Morris.

  
She was sitting on her suitcase trying to read a book when she heard the first gunshots. Just a few pops at first, then a continuous volley of rapid fire, some right outside the hangar, some from a distance. Her head shot around as Morris woke quickly, jumped up from his blanket and pulled her off of the suitcase, putting his body between her and middle of the hangar.

  
The shooting died down but was followed by yelling. English, Australian, and American yelling. Yelling commands in English, the very language M wanted to hear. She stood up but was still blocked by Morris.

  
Several black-clad figures holding all types of weapons stormed into the hangar, causing the passengers inside to scatter. Instantly a voice over a megaphone started announcing that they were agents from the UK, US, and Australia and that the passengers were safe.

  
It took another 10 minutes of talking and explaining before all of the passengers believed that they were, indeed, safe and going to be rescued.

  
One of the men walked briskly around the hangar, looking for one specific passenger. When he spotted her he gazed at her for several seconds, mentally verifying against the information that he had been given that this was right woman.

  
M could feel his eyes on her and for a brief moment thought it all was a lie. They weren’t safe, she was actually the target, and she wouldn’t get out of this alive.

  
The man spoke but M couldn’t hear what he said. She could only see his lips moving. She could also see Morris shifting on his feet and moving closer to her. He also wasn’t buying that it was over.

***

“I have visual confirmation,” was all Bond needed to hear before he jumped out of the waiting helicopter and sprinted towards the hangar.

***

Bond entered the hangar and his nose was instantly stung by the smell of sweat, body odor, spoiled food, and fear. Bodies, suitcases, blankets, clothes, and shoes were spread out everywhere…every square foot of the cavernous hangar’s floor was covered. People were standing everywhere, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  
In the center was the plane, stretching from end to end, just barely fitting into the building. The overhead lights glared off of the aluminum skin, the bright red livery colors standing out against the palette of the floor.

  
“To your left, in the south corner” said the voice in his ear. As he turned and moved he saw the flash of white hair.

  
She was a petite woman, but not thin. He would use the word thick to describe her body type. But now she was thinner, and haggard. He guessed that she had dropped about 10 pounds by the way her clothes hung on her. Greasy hair surrounded her pale face, marked with a few smudges of dirt on her forehead and cheeks.

  
“Bond, about time you got here,” she said, half seriously, half jokingly.

  
“Well, you could have picked a better place to hide out,” he responded.

  
He walked up to her and gave her a quick hug, putting one arm behind her back and the other on the side of her head, over her ear. To the casual observer it looked like a man greeting a woman, perhaps his mother. In reality, he was placing a communications device in her ear.

  
Instantly M heard Tanner’s voice.

  
“…someone please tell me what’s going on!”

  
“I’m here,” was all she said into the small microphone.

  
“Oh, thank God. Are you alright?” Tanner’s voice was a mixture of stress, excitement, and relief. M guessed she had had more sleep than her chief of staff in the past 9 days.

  
“Yes, I am. A bit tired. Hungry. Could use a shower.” She was talking to Tanner, but looking directly at Bond. He held the gaze of her blue eyes but noticed the dark bags underneath.

  
“Morris is here, he is well,” she continued. Bond looked at Morris, noticed that he, too, was thinner, disheveled, dirty, with bags under his eyes as well. M looked rested compared to Morris.

  
“Hold on, ma’am,” Tanner squeaked in her ear.

  
“M, it’s Halverson.”

  
She wasted no time with small talk.

  
“All passengers here are well. Need food and water. After we landed we were forced off of the plane. The hijackers took 7 of the Australian passengers, businessmen, and flew off in another plane. Many of the crew was in on this, even some flight attendants. We’ve been kept from leaving the hangar by an armed group of about twenty, maybe more. They sent trucks with food and water the first few days but then the rations dwindled to very little, then to nothing. We’ve had no food or water in two days.”

  
“Understood,” answered Halverson, obviously relaying this to whomever they were working with. M didn’t know if there were other agents or operatives amongst the passengers so she wasn’t sure if someone else was giving the same information.

  
“We’re giving this to the Australians and Americans, although we might never be able to explain how we knew where to find the plane,” said Halverson, answering her question. As with several times in the past, M was grateful for the anonymity required for her position. No one would ever be able to drag her name through the mud, even long after she was dead.

  
“I’ve been in constant touch with Ian. I will personally inform him that you are okay.”

  
“Thank you,” M replied.

  
“Hold on, M,” said Halverson. There was a small gap of silence before M heard the voice of the British Prime Minister.

  
“M, it’s David Cameron. I’m glad that you are alright,” he said quickly. She was mildly surprised that the Prime Minister would have been waiting to speak with her.

  
“Thank you, sir. It’s been difficult, but we’ve managed to keep some semblance of civility. I guess a British stiff upper lip has served us well,” she said.

  
“I won’t take much of your time, Halverson needs more information. Just know that I’ve talked with your family every day and will personally tell them that I have spoken with you and that you are well.”

  
“My…family?” M choked.

  
“Yes, they are all at your house, have been for days. I hope I get the count right…three children, three spouses, one former spouse, nine grandchildren and one great-grandson who misses you terribly and asked me if he could sleep in your bed. And a cat.”

  
The tears had pooled in M’s eyes as she fought to gain control. Her entire family was at her house, including her son whom she had just seen in Sydney. The need to see them, to be with them, was so overwhelming that she swayed just a bit, almost losing her balance. Bond steadied her with a slight grasp at her elbow.

  
“I don’t have a cat,” was the only reply she could muster.

  
“You do now,” the Prime Minister laughed.

  
“Yes, sir.”

  
The device was given back to Halverson.

***

The passengers would be put into 3 groups: those going to Asia, Europe, or America. Three separate planes would land and pick up their group of passengers. Take only essential belongings, suitcases would follow in military aircraft.

  
And this all needed to happen within an hour as the planes were limited by fuel and had already been flying and circling for hours.

  
On board each plane would be food, water, and medical personnel. Stay calm, they were all safe. Agents were in the jungle providing protection and fighter aircraft were keeping watch from the skies.

***

M picked up her briefcase, shoved some articles of clothing into it and turned toward the exit. As they walked out to the holding area for the Europe-bound passengers M started laughing. Bond turned to her, thinking she must still be talking to someone at MI6. Then he saw she had taken the device out of her ear.

  
“I must be quite the sight,” she said, touching her flat, dirty hair.

  
She was quite the site, thought Bond. He had always known her to be impeccably dressed in tailored suits and professionally groomed, perpetually looking the part of the high-ranking government official. As they continued to walk Bond could see the pins in her waistband, holding the skirt onto her body, and her bare legs. At some point she had ditched her stockings.

  
“M, right now you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Bond responded, leaning in and kissing her right cheek. She reeked of grease and body odor and bad breath and it would have been so easy to turn away from her. But Bond remembered many times when he had stood in front of her, unshaven, covered in blood, dirt, sweat, and sometimes even drenched in alcohol. And though most of those times she had been angry with him, she had never once flinched or never turned away in disgust. He owed it to her to show the same respect.

  
“Considering the women you hang out with Bond, that’s saying quite a bit," she said.

***

Within minutes of wheels up, medical personnel had swarmed the passengers, looking for injuries or illness. M was in the back of the plane, with Bond next to her and Morris one row up. Bond noted that even with a Double-O’s presence, he wasn’t going to take his eyes off of her. He silently commended the young man for his devotion to his duty and M.

  
The doctor approached the row, catching M’s attention with bottles of sports drink and questions about her health. She relayed she had no wounds and wasn’t feeling sick except for thirst and hunger.

  
“Drink this slowly over the next 30 minutes,” said the doctor, handing her a bottle of purple liquid.

  
“Then drink this in another 15 minutes,” he said as he handed her a second bottle full of orange liquid.

  
“If you drink it any faster you’ll throw up.”

  
“Oh, great, as if I’m not already dirty enough,” said M, but taking the bottle and opening it slowly. She took a small sip, savoring the liquid in her mouth. Part of her wanted to drink the whole bottle at once she was so thirsty, but she knew that the doctor was right about the vomiting. Her gut wrenched when the liquid hit her stomach and she doubled over. All over the plane the same scene was playing out, row after row of former hostages drinking their first sips of water in over 24 hours.

  
Food was quickly served, a bland meal for their sensitive stomachs: plain broiled chicken breasts, white rice, and beef broth. M turned up her nose at it but once the smell hit her the pain in her stomach doubled and hunger took over. She slowly took small bites of the food, not wanting to throw up.

***

The plane landed in Honolulu and within a few hours the passengers were tucked away in hotel rooms. The governor of Hawaii had worked with management to relocate the guests and get all the rooms ready for the inbound passengers. M had disappeared immediately into her room with an MI6 doctor in tow.

  
Bond waited in the lobby for the doctor.

  
“Doc, is she going to be okay?” Bond wasn’t sure if he’d even tell him about her medical status.

  
“Yes, both of them are. Dehydrated, although the sports drinks helped. She needs good food and rest and to be home with her family,” he said, still walking toward the front door.

  
“Thanks, appreciate it.” With that information, Bond doubled back to the elevator.

  
Bond quickly checked on Morris to see if he needed anything before moving down the corridor to M’s room.

  
He knocked lightly, not wanting to disturb her if she was already asleep.

  
She answered immediately, freshly scrubbed and wrapped in a white hotel robe, drying her hair with a towel.

  
“Bond,” she said.

  
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything,” he said, suddenly not sure why he had actually knocked on her door.

  
He guessed it was to just to make sure this was real, that she was real.

  
“According to the doctor, I’m well, although I could use a real meal. Perhaps a filet, wrapped in bacon. A serving of asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. A glass of red wine,” she said with an air of whimsy in her voice.

  
Bond heard her stomach growl at the thought of such a meal.

  
“Instead, I have tea. Just ordered it, would you care to join me?” she said, stepping aside to let him in.

  
Moments later she was tucked into one end of the couch, feet underneath her, clutching a mug of tea. Bond wasn’t quite sure what to say to her. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her about the hijacking but he wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate time. Instead he blurted out the one question that had been in the back of his head since he first heard the radio announcement.

  
“M, how are you doing?”

  
M thought for a moment, sighing, and took a sip of her tea.

  
“I don’t know. Still in shock, I think. Shock from the hijacking, shock from the living conditions at the hangar, shock at the rescue.”

  
She took another sip of her tea.

  
“I’m shocked at how easy it was to fly a jumbo jet so far off course, with over 500 people aboard, and nobody knew where we were. In this day and age of drones, snooping, and high-def satellite imagery you would think that we would have been located the minute we fell off radar.”

  
Bond nodded in agreement.

  
“But what shocks me the most? If Q hadn’t given me that beacon we would probably never have been found.”

  
Bond mulled over her words and realized she was probably right. Oh, they would have found the plane alright, but more than likely they would have found bodies instead of live passengers. Those who didn’t die of disease, dehydration and starvation would probably have been shot by the guards as they eventually got bored of babysitting over 500 people in the middle of the jungle.

  
“And I’m just exhausted,” she said, looking at him intently with her crazy blue eyes.

  
“I have never in my life been this exhausted. Mentally more than physically,” she said. “It wasn’t just lack of sleep. It was worrying that I might be the target or my identity would be revealed. It was keeping an eye on Morris and our little parcel of the hangar floor.”

  
“I’ve told Tanner and Halverson already about how Morris performed. It was duly noted,” said Bond.

  
“Thank you. How is Tanner?”

  
“He misses you. They all miss you. I missed you.”

  
M looked at him for just a moment before taking another sip of tea.

  
“Oh, Tanner just hates working with Halverson. And you, you just didn’t want to have to learn a new set of access codes to somebody else’s house,” she chided.

  
“Something like that,” Bond answered, laughing. His lack of faith in anyone who wasn’t M was well-known amongst Double-Os. But the small group of select agents all agreed she took care of them and their special requirements better than anyone else ever cared to, including going to bat in front of the Prime Minister when they screwed up or needed help.  
She put down her tea and leaned back on the couch. Bond noticed that she was no longer looking at him. Wasn’t really looking at anything. Her eyes had the distant look of someone trying not to remember.

  
“For the most part, everything was okay. But people get a little crazy when they are hungry or desperate to protect their family. It wasn’t quite ‘Lord of the Flies’ but there were some brawls, especially when the food and water ran out and we didn’t know if the supply truck was going to come back.” She spoke softly. Bond leaned forward so he could hear her better, a tight knot forming in his stomach.

  
This was an M he had never seen before, one he didn’t even know existed, and it was making him feel a bit unbalanced. He was used to the brash, brusque M. The M that barked orders to her staff and made chill-inducing comments such as ‘don’t ever break into my house again’ with the threat of formidable punishment unspoken, yet clearly understood. The M who wasn’t afraid to dress down a Double-O, the most highly-trained agent in the service and who could take her down with one hand. The M who kept tight leashes on all of her SIS agents and kept them in line.

  
There was a story floating around MI6, had been for years, that M chewed glass like others chewed gum. Sometimes he half believed it himself. She was tough, even mean sometimes.  
The woman sitting with him was none of those things. She was scared, he could see that clearly. Scared of all that had happened in the past ten days. Scared of what could have happened. And with all that, allowing Bond to see her in such a state and inviting him into her private room. It wasn’t right, and he knew it.

  
He realized she had stopped talking but was looking down at her hands. Her mug sat on the table.

  
Bond got up and walked to the service cart and put down his mug. It was time to go. She needed sleep.

  
He turned around and saw she had closed her eyes and was leaning back on the cushions. Not quite asleep, but close.

  
He went into the bedroom and pulled down the covers on the king-sized bed. He then walked back into the main area, hooked his hand underneath her shoulder and pulled her to her feet.

  
“Come on, M. To bed.”

  
She made no sound as he led her into the bedroom. He stopped at the bed, untied her bathrobe and took it off of her shoulders. She crawled into the bed and pulled the covers up. Immediately she rolled onto her side into a ball and closed her eyes. She was so tiny in that huge bed. Except for the white hair, she looked like a child.

  
“Goodnight, M,” he said, leaning over her and, for the second time in just a few hours, gave her a kiss on her right cheek.

  
She smelled much better this time.

***

Bond woke with a start, pulling the blanket off of his face. Instantly he was alert and aware that he was still on the couch in M’s hotel suite. After putting her to bed the night before he had come back to the couch and sat down, intent on staying nearby in case she awoke and needed something. Twice he had looked in on her, standing in the doorway and listening to her long, deep breaths, taking comfort in the knowledge she was finally getting the sleep she needed. The last thing he remembered was picking up a newspaper to read.

He must have fallen asleep.

  
“Good morning, Double-O Seven,” came a voice from the dining table to his left. He sat up and saw M sitting at the table with an open laptop in front of her, a cup of coffee in her hand. She was impeccably dressed in a green jacket, black blouse and skirt, stockings, and flats. Bond was amazed that she had gotten up, made coffee, and moved around the small suite without waking him. He must have been more tired than he realized.

  
“It’s 8:30. The plane leaves in 3 hours. They pick us up at 10:30. Be ready will you?” she said, without even looking up at him.

  
“And you bloody well aren't showering here,” she added.

  
Her eyes were bright, her speech was clipped and clear, her wardrobe, hair and makeup were flawless. She sounded irritated that he was still there.

  
Bond sighed with relief.

  
She was back to chewing glass.

 

***

Epilogue

The office pool put M’s return to MI6 at 2 weeks, but she shocked everyone and didn’t come back to work for a month. Speculation amongst the staff was that she really was injured or ill, despite what all the reports had said.

  
Bond was certain it had something to do with her 6-year-old great grandson and his cat. And a clandestine visit from Ian Smithson. Only the most senior officials at MI5 and MI6 and a few of the Double-Os had been alerted to the personal travel of the head of the CIA.

  
This time Bond noted when Tanner called and brusquely summoned him to the office for M it was 3:15 in the afternoon. Once again he shooed away a blonde and drove through the streets of London. He arrived shortly thereafter and waited at Tanner’s desk.

  
He could see M through the glass walls, sitting at her desk and talking to the chief of staff. He had not seen her since the company car had dropped her off at her front doorstep almost six weeks ago. She had put back on a few pounds, but not all. She still looked a little tired, but overall she looked as she had before departing for Sydney.

  
Tanner left her office and came to his desk just as another man came up to Bond’s left.

  
“Double-O Seven.”

  
“Double-O Nine.”

  
The two men shook hands.

  
“She’s ready for both of you,” said Tanner, waving his arm towards her office, his attention already elsewhere.

  
The two men walked into her office. She was still sitting behind her desk but holding out two separate envelopes, one for each of them.

  
“Bond, Ronson, I’ve got a mission for you. In Turkey.”


End file.
